The Dog of the North will be published by
Macmillan New Writing in July 2008. As the publication process unfolds I
will be sharing my thoughts on the
Macmillan New Writers
blog.

The Dog of the North follows the linked stories of
two very different characters: Beauceron is 'the Dog of the North', a
mercenary captain who commands a fearsome reputation, and Arren, a young
man of talent but few prospects.

Beauceron has sworn allegiance to the Winter King of the
northern realm of Mettingloom, which he uses as the base for his raids.
At the start of the novel, he is attempting to raise an army to besiege
the city of Croad, in the kingdom of Emmen—Arren's
home city. What are Beauceron's motives? To the folk of
Mettingloom—and the reader—they are mysterious. Beauceron's situation in Mettingloom is not straightforward: various
factions within the court attempt to use him to further their own
purposes, and Beauceron himself begins to feel the stirrings of
conscience over the fate of two noble ladies he has kidnapped.

Arren is taken into the household of Croad's ruler, Lord Thaume, as a
companion for Thaume's son, Oricien. Arren receives the education
of a soldier and a gentleman, and distinguishes himself on the
battlefield. He seems set for a glorious career, but already
events are conspiring against him.

The Dog of the North has
certain similarities with both The Zael Inheritance, and more
particularly, Dragonchaser (to which it is to a certain extent a
companion piece). In all three books, a mixture of the comic and
serious pertains, sometimes in the same scene, and the heroes are
uniformly at the mercy of beautiful but manipulative women. Does
this tell the reader something of the author's psyche? I think
not, other than to suggest he finds such dynamics fruitful in creating
satisfying and amusing fictions. In The Dog of the North, the main female
characters tend to be more intelligent or wiser—usually both—than the
men. This may be the normal order of events: readers will
necessarily have recourse to their own experience in assessing the
author's veracity.

Perhaps more pertinently, all three
novels are to some degree concerned with the nature of power. In
The Dog of the North, kings, queens, princes, dukes and lords
abound, as do 'viators', the clerics who exercise considerable behind
the scenes influence. Other characters in the story have power
which obtains from their personality rather than their position.
If those who occupy the offices of state tend not to be worthy of their
positions, well, stories about enlightened rulers reigning with calm
good sense tend not to make interesting reading.

The Dog of the North and Dragonchaser

In Dragonchaser, magic is
weak; outlawed, and practised only in secret. The Dog of the
North takes place several hundred years earlier, and
magic—"thaumaturgy"—has an honoured if modest place in society.
Master Pinch, the one thaumaturge presented in the book, has severely
limited powers: the one piece of sorcery we see him undertake is minor
in nature and only partly successful, and he prefers to fall back on
charlatanry where he can. Those who truly understand magic have
better things to do than involve themselves in temporal matters. Events which take place after the book's
close (the "Cataclysm of the East") will lead to the proscription of
magic, and may form the basis of a future work. Watch this
space...